Discovered, at the age of sixteen, by Maureen Wadia, through her Glad Rags magazine, nearly ten years ago.

She seduced us from the cover, dressed in nothing more than a red Baywatch - style swimsuit.

Her only form of dieting is by cutting out rice, "roti" and white bread from her meals. Walking is one of her passions too. According to her "Apart from the exercise value, it's a great way to unwind".

She absolutely hates ramp modeling, she tells us."I'm not very tall, I don't have the height and somehow I just never gelled with it"

She went on to host "BPL OYE!", which was the most watched show on Channel [V]. She even did a cameo role opposite flop-actor Rahul Roy.

She resurrected her career with Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's "Afreen Afreen" music video. in which she tempted and seduced the strikingly handsome Himanshu Mallik.

She disappeared from the modeling scene giving rise to a host of Rumours. Some say her house got robbed and her invalid mother and aging father were roughed up. Others say she died of a drug over dose. Yet others said that her boyfriend (?) at the time, Sanjay Narang, of The Ambassador Flight Kitchen, had beaten her up so savagely, you could barely recognize her. None of which was true.She had simply gone back home to Canada for a breather.She returned after a year to India and started concentrating more on promoting art and young artists. Apart from a few close friends, no one knew she was back.

She came back with a vengeance

Done the recent Lakme, Sprite, Matiz, Monte Carlo, and the Garden ad Campaigns. She has appeared on the cover of the latest Great Looks, Elle and Femina magazines.

She is even seen in Daler Mehendi's music video, riding pillion on a motorbike. She is anchoring Star Movies' Star Biz with Kelly Dorjee.

Comparing shows is not off the cards for her. Having compared the Screen Awards and the Derby Fashion Nite where the latter was absolutely unscripted and impromptu. She has just signed up and finished shooting Vikram Bhatt's next film "Kasoor" opposite Aftaab Shivdasani. She has been appointed the ambassador in India for Rado Watches. She does not want to be known only as a model or a TV personality or a film actress. Rather she want a balance between all these worlds because she believes "all these things build one on top of the other". She's recently taken up the pen and begun writing for Indian publications. Cosmopolitan, The Times group of publications and The Indian Express are just a few of the publications she has written in. Her ambition is to be a novelist, with a base in Paris. Latest reports suggest that Lisa's second movie is in the pipe line. This one again directed by Vikram Bhatt and starring Dino Morea opposite Lisa. That body - green eyes, amazing bust, sleek contours and impossible legs, those green eyes and winsome smile! A lethal combination, if there ever was one. You're looking at the person who hit the jackpot the very first time she did a modelling assignment. Lisa Ray started young, at 16, and her first campaign was for Bombay Dyeing. One day, she was gone. As usual. Then suddenly, she's back again. As usual. Breathtakingly beautiful. As usual. An accident forced Lisa to take a sabbatical, away from the bright lights, make-up and Mumbai. She set off for home in Canada. Lisa came back to Mumbai, and walked right on to the sets of Channel [V]'s BPL-Oye. And you couldn't have missed her in Nusrat Fateh Ali's music video for 'Afreen'. And will she leave Mumbai again? As Lisa insists: "Hey, I'm hooked on this city!" During the sabbatical, Lisa also went to Canada - where she was born and brought up. Born of a Bengali father and Polish mother, she returns to that faraway land often "to immerse myself in family, take a course or two, catch up on shopping and friends, realign myself to that life again. Canada's a great destresser..." This time, she brought back a whole new way of eating. "I'm the opposite of a health nut, I love food and I eat like a sow, but now I'm an enthusiastic convert to Dr Berry Sears' concept of eating in 'The Zone'. This largely involves reducing simple carbohydrates in your diet to lose weight and regain energy. I used to laugh at other people talking about things like this, but my energy levels are just soaring... I sound just like one of those fanatics," she laughs, then hams on, "Finding out about the Zone has been the most exciting thing in my life - what a life, huh!" Nevertheless, it has been an exciting life for the woman whose beauty first saw her model for Bombay Dyeing at 16, scorch the covers of Glad Rags in the interim and whose most recent appearance in the video for Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's Aafreen almost set the small screen smoking. Of her own beauty, she says, "People don't realise how much other people work at making you look good. A lot of magic happens behind the scenes..." And Lisa believes her USP as a model comes from being a great canvas for the magic to work on. "I think I'm completely flexible. I can be made to look very different every time - that's my special contribution to any project. I can look young and innocent, or do a great vamp look; very, very foreign or absolutely Indian." Still, absolutely Indian or not, this is one chameleon that Hindi commercial cinema is not going to win over just yet. "Hindi films are a completely different world unto themselves - of untapped talent and too much politicising. Our films need to improve in quality and production values, to speak the international language of cinema," she declares.

Of her exit from the late Mukul Anand's Dus, she says, "I realised that that world was not for me. It demands dedication; it sucks your life - I was not willing to give it that. My logic to quit when I did was that it was better to leave than do a half-hearted job or leave half way through - it seemed to me the most decent thing to do...

"A lot of models are going into films," she muses, "Hats off to them. It's a difficult life and unfortunately people expect too much from them. They probably work their butts off. I'm just much lazier, I guess."